Mining John Updike's territory of vaguely bitter, contemplative middle-age, but from a clear-eyed female perspective, Nietzke's (the nonfiction Natalie on the Street, 1994) first collection offers the last word on burnt-out baby boomdom in southern California. The women in Nietzke's tales confront common dilemmas with a surly disregard for their presumed timelessness: Husbands have split, lesbianism has replaced straight domesticity, menopause looms. In the title story, Lili develops attachments to laundry and gin while considering the absence of her male lover. When he returns, abjectly, it's difficult to know whether she feels elated or merely reassured. ``Los Angeles Here and Now'' hinges on the accidental delivery of a cremated young surfer's ashes to a woman who, after she takes the remains to her grieving neighbor, finds herself sexually enticed by the woman's cool suffering. ``No Man's Land'' is a novella in the form of an extended, Proustian meditation, with a tennis racket returned by protagonist Corinne's ex-husband sparking her recollections of that failed marriage. Her husband, Jack, was just free of one marriage and considerably older than Corinne when they got hitched; now Jack is on wife number three, and Corinne has fallen in love with a woman. In fact, Corinne and Jack shared just two passions: one for tennis, the other for Lela, a willowy temptress who lures everyone toward sexual reckonings. With tennis as her main conceit, Nietzke uses contrasting playing styles—Corinne's is stolid and dependable, the younger Lela's slashing and aggressive—both to structure the narrative and explore the ways in which women who came of age in the 1960s have changed. With her unwavering eye for the foibles of L.A. utopianism and her tremendous grasp of social mores, Nietzke has been compared with Joan Didion. This book, however, is less reportage than a quiet feast of unforgettable characters.
Pub Date: April 12, 1996
ISBN: 1-56947-052-9
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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